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Friday, September 21, 2012

Tight Place Dairy

The B&H man kept calling us "sweetie," and I didn't even care.

After work, after picking my kid up on our designated corner, I convinced her to go to B&H Dairy with me, a tight place of a restaurant on 2nd Avenue in the East Village. You can't get flesh there: no burgers, no meat. In the tradition of kosher restaurants, the "meat" restaurant is across the street (and there you won't find any butter, can't ask for a glass of milk).

We go because I love the cold borscht and my kid loves the matzah ball soup. We both tear through the huge hunks of challah they chop off for us, slathered with butter--because, Lara, there is a lot of butter here, which cracks me up, because B&H stands for . . . "Better Health."

If the counter stools are taken, if the tables lining the wall are filled, you have to angle your body to get in. We did, laden with packs, and got the last two counter seats. We know what we want without menus, and we got our soups in 30 seconds. The server put it down with such haste, it sloshed. Everything was messy and good--and cheap.

There are walk-in closets bigger than this.

So fascinated by this "Kosher Certifications" even after 17 years in NYC

On the way back from escorting another kid somewhere, I insisted of getting out of my mental tight place--feeling so circumscribed, Lara--but kid obligation, that I decided to try and find Thoreau in my local used bookstore.

This edition carries an inscription from 1971. It sounds like the receiver was headed for some kind of peripatetic world tour. So jealous (unlike Thoreau who refused all invites to Europe). But having the Dairy around kind of makes me feel like I'm living a little.